"Perhaps she has," said Hannaford.

"But, dear Mademoiselle," Madeleine was pleading at a little distance, "why won't you go to supper? Do! It would be so pleasant. I have so little happiness; and this would at least give me an hour of distraction."

"You can go without me," said Mary. "Captain Hannaford is your friend, isn't he?"

"Ah, I see! The sight of the poor afflicted man disgusts you. If you refuse, he will know why. It will be ungracious—cruel."

"Don't say that," Mary implored, much distressed. "I wouldn't hurt his feelings for the world. It's true I can't bear to look at him, though he hasn't a bad face. But it isn't only that. I could try to get over it. The other reason is, I never met him or Mr. Carleton before, and—and I don't know anything about society, or what is done; but I have a sort of feeling——"

"Mais mon Dieu!" murmured Madame d'Ambre. "Quelle petite sotte! No matter. It is a pretty pose, and suits you well. I am the last to find fault with it. Yet listen. These gentlemen are distinguished. Captain Hannaford is an English officer who has been of a courage incredible. He can wear many medals if he chooses. Now he is very sad, despite his luck in the Casino. He needs cheering. And this young Monsieur Carleton, the American, I have read of him in the papers. He is widely known as a man who flies, and these airmen are of a nobility of character! I am your chaperon. What more do you ask? I am the widow of a naval officer. Do you not owe me something for the good turn I have done you to-night?"

"Yes, indeed, I owe you a great deal," Mary admitted.

It was quite certain that what Madame d'Ambre considered as owing to her would be paid.

Prince Vanno saw the four leaving the Casino together, Mary and Carleton walking behind the other two. He had met both the Englishman and the American in Egypt once or twice, and had not thought of them since. Now he would forget neither. The story about Hannaford and his retirement from the army, Vanno knew. He had heard nothing of Carleton except what was to his credit, but somehow this fact made it no less unpleasant for Vanno that the aeronaut should be talking with Mary. He did not believe they had met before to-night.

The Galerie Charles Trois was brilliantly lighted, and supper was beginning behind immense glass windows at Ciro's and the glittering white and gold restaurant of the Metropole. At Ciro's there had been a dinner in honour of two celebrated airmen, and the decorations remained. There were suspended monoplanes and biplanes made of flowers, and when the great Ciro himself saw Carleton, he came forward, inviting the young man to take a window-table.

Carleton explained that he was only a guest; but this made no difference. Except the King of Sweden's table, and that of the Grand Duke Cyril, Mr. Carleton and his friends must have the best.

"My dear friend," said Hannaford, as they sat down, letting his eyes dwell on Madame d'Ambre's costume, "it's lucky for us that we are with a celebrity, or the fatted calf would not have been prepared for us. No use disguising the truth: you and I are a little the worse for wear. Only with you, the damage is temporary. Put you into a new frock and hat, and you'll revive like a flower in fresh water. Nothing can revive me. You see, I look facts in the face."

"Could one not make facts pleasant to see, if one must look them in the face?" Mary ventured, gently.

"I'm sure you will make them so for Madame," said Hannaford.

"It is only those who are very happy, or very miserable, who can joke forever, as you do," said Madame d'Ambre. "I can understand you now, or I could, at my worst. But for the moment I have new life. I try to forget the future."

As they ate a delicious and well-chosen supper she revived, delicately, and regarded her misfortunes from a distance. "To think, if I had not met you all, and if I had kept my resolve," she said, "by now I should have found out the great secret."

As she spoke, a tall, thin man came to the table, and laid his hand on Dick Carleton's shoulder. So doing, he stood looking straight into Madame d'Ambre's face. She started a little, and blushed deeply. Blushes were a great stock-in-trade with Madame d'Ambre. They proved that, unlike Clotilde et Cie., she did not paint her face: that she was altogether a different order of being. But this blush was less successful than usual. It was a flush of annoyance, and showed that she was vexed.

The man was more American in type than Carleton, though indefinably so. If a critic had been asked how he would know this person to be a New Yorker, even if met wrapped in bearskins at the North Pole, he might have been at a loss to explain. Nevertheless, the dark face with its twinkling, heavily black-lashed blue eyes, its short, wavy black hair turning gray at the temples, its prominent nose and chin, lips and jaws slightly aggressive in their firmness, was the distilled essence of New York. So were the strong, lean figure, and the nervous, virile hands.

"Hello, Jim!" exclaimed Carleton, turning quickly at the touch on his shoulder. "I've only played with a dish or two. I was waiting for you, really." He got up, and rather shyly introduced the party to his host of the celebrated Stellamare.

"I have the pleasure of knowing this lady slightly, already," said Schuyler, still fixing Madeleine with his straight, disconcerting gaze.

"Madame d'Ambre?"

"I don't think we knew each other's name. I had the honour of doing a small—a very small—service for Madame, such a service as any man may be allowed to do for a lady at Monte Carlo."

If he laid an emphasis on the last two words, it was hardly strong enough to be noticed, unless by the person most concerned.

"Do sit down with us, and eat the Welsh rabbit Carleton has been talking about," said Hannaford. "This is my show. I shall be delighted, and I'm sure I speak for the ladies."

Madame d'Ambre murmured something, and Mary smiled a more than ordinarily friendly smile; for she knew that this was the distant cousin of whom she had heard from Peter, the "Jim" who, in Molly Maxwell's eyes, was an heroic figure. Peter never tired of telling anecdotes of Jim's wonderful feats of finance, his coolness and daring in times of black panic or perilous uncertainty in Wall Street, his scholarly attainments, of which he never spoke; his passion for music and gardens, and other contradictory traits such as no one would have expected in a keen business man. Sometimes Mary had fancied that Peter was a little inclined to fall in love with Jim Schuyler, perhaps because he was one of the few men she knew who did not grovel at her feet. Now Mary looked at the man with intense interest, and could imagine a girl like Molly Maxwell making him her hero, in spite of the difference between their ages. Molly was not twenty-one. He must be thirty-eight or forty, and would have looked hard if it had not been for the blue eyes which might soften dangerously under certain influences.

Mary's first impulse on hearing his name was to cry out, "Why, your cousin Molly Maxwell is my best friend!" But something imperatively stopped her. Deep down under the excitement and pleasure of this adventure into which fate had plunged her, murmured a little voice, saying, "You ought not to have come to this place alone, when they all trusted you to go straight to Florence." And if she were doing wrong and meant to keep on doing wrong, she must not associate herself with Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, in the minds of people here. It would not be fair to the convent and Reverend Mother, not even fair to Aunt Sara and Elinor, who believed her to be journeying obediently toward Florence. Thinking thus, she determined to say nothing of her own life to those she might meet at Monte Carlo. Soon she would go away, and no real harm would have been done to any one. As for this supper, if she had lingering doubts that it was not quite "the thing" to have accepted, the name of Jim Schuyler chased them away like clouds before the sun. It was like being with an old friend to have Peter's cousin there; and Dick Carleton was staying with him. Mr. Carleton and Captain Hannaford were friends, and Mr. Schuyler evidently knew Madame d'Ambre, so everything had turned out delightfully. Also it was exciting to see how people who came in looked at her and whispered. She could not help knowing that they said, "There's the girl who won so much in the Casino that everybody rushed to her table and applauded."

It was wonderful, intoxicating, to be the heroine of such a place, to have experienced players envy her. She longed for to-morrow morning, so that she might go back to the same table at the Casino, and play on zero and twenty-four again. "I think I shall always make that my game, and go to the same table," she said to herself, with the unconscious egotism and vanity of a child.

"What was that I caught as I arrived, about 'finding out the great secret?'" Schuyler asked, when he sat down at a place made for him on Madame d'Ambre's right hand. Again he fixed his eyes on her, this time with polite interest. "I thought the words sounded familiar. I remember your saying something of the sort, I'm sure, the evening of our first meeting."

"I do not recall it, Monsieur," replied Madeleine.

"It was on the Casino terrace," he went on, reflectively. "I was walking there between the first and second acts of an opera, about a fortnight ago. We met, and you seemed depressed, Madame. It was then I was able to do you that small service."

"I did not think of it as a service," she said, bitterly.

"Ah, now the occasion has come back to you. What, not a service when a lady has a little bottle of poison stuck into her belt, and a man drinks it himself rather than she should keep her threat and swallow it!"

"It was not a threat. I would have drunk the poison and ended everything," she insisted.

"If I hadn't been so selfish and greedy as to take it out of your hand and sample it. Strange it did me no harm. I had a presentiment it wouldn't, somehow. But of course my system may be poison-proof. By the way, isn't that the same pretty little bottle I see now, tucked into your belt! And were you thinking of trying its effect again to-night, if these friends hadn't come in time to cheer you up, and so put off the evil day?"

"You are very cruel to make sport of my tragedy, Monsieur!" Madame d'Ambre exclaimed, her soft wistfulness flashing into anger. "These sympathetic ones have saved me from myself by their generosity. They have made me happy. Why do you go out of your way to remind me of misery?"

Schuyler's blue eyes twinkled cynically, yet not unkindly. "I quite understand that you can be saved from yourself only by sufficient generosity, Madame," he said. "The question is, what is sufficient? Too much sometimes goes to the head. Far be it from me to upset your cup of happiness. But drink wisely, Madame, in little sips, not in great gulps. It's better for the health—of all concerned. And the contents of your bottle will no doubt be just as efficacious another time."

"I know what you mean," she flung at him, viperishly. "You have heard of Mademoiselle's luck to-night. You think I mean to take advantage of her. I would not——"

"Of course not, Madame. You, the widow of a naval officer! Have I accused you of anything?" Schuyler cut her short, with sudden gayety of manner. "I've heard of Mademoiselle's luck. She was pointed out to me by a man I know, as I came in, just before joining you. But as I'm aware that you're a good business woman, my idea is that the advantage you'll take won't amount to more than 5 per cent. More would be usury, and give Mademoiselle an unfavourable idea of Monte Carlo manners."

He spoke with deliberation, allotting each word its full value; and before Madame d'Ambre could leash her rage, he turned to Mary. "Talking of Monte Carlo manners," he took up the theme again, "you mustn't judge hastily. There isn't one Monte Carlo. There are many. I don't suppose you ever saw a cocktail of any sort, much less one called the 'rainbow?' It's in several different coloured layers of liquid, each distinct from the other, as far as taste and appearance are concerned, though they blend together as you drink. It wouldn't do to sip the top layer, and say what the decoction was like, before you absorbed the whole—with discrimination. Well, that cocktail's something like Monte Carlo. Only you begin the cocktail at the top. In the Monte Carlo rainbow you sometimes begin at the bottom."

He looked steadily at Mary as he finished his simile. Then he lifted the silver cover of a dish which had just arrived, and gave his whole attention to a noble Welsh rabbit, an odd dainty for a Riviera supper—but Ciro prided himself on gratifying any whim of any customer, at five minutes' notice.

Captain Hannaford had listened in silence, with a light of malicious amusement in his eyes, which travelled from Madeleine to Mary, from Mary to Madeleine, and occasionally to Dick Carleton.

Mary, despite her blank ignorance of the world and its ways, was far from stupid or slow of understanding. She realized that Schuyler's harangue to Madame d'Ambre was all, or almost all, for her: and she caught his meaning in the last sentence of the rainbow allegory. He wanted her to know that she had "begun at the bottom," and must beware. She was half vexed, half grateful; vexed for Madeleine, and grateful for herself, because, being Peter's hero, he must be a good man, who would not be cruel to a woman for sheer love of cruelty. But her shamed pity for Madeleine was stronger than her gratitude; and instead of giving less out of her winnings than she had planned to give, she impulsively decided to give more; this, not because she believed in or liked Madeleine d'Ambre, but because she winced under a sister woman's humiliation. The ugly flash in the eyes that had been wistful, shocked her. She saw that they were cat-coloured eyes, and Jim Schuyler scored as he meant to score, in her resolve to pay Madame d'Ambre well, then gently to slip out of her friendship.

"When we finish supper, she can go with me to my hotel, and we'll divide the money into three parts," Mary said to herself. "I'll give her two, and keep one. Even one will be like a little fortune; and whatever happens I'll keep enough to get away with; but I must play again to-morrow. It's too wonderful to stop yet."

But she was reckoning without Jim Schuyler.

When he saw the eyes of Madeleine hint that it was time to go, he said quickly, "Well, Mademoiselle, have you counted your winnings, and do you know exactly what they amount to?"

"No," said Mary, "not yet. I thought Madame d'Ambre and I might do that afterward."

"Can't we save you the trouble?" he asked. "Why not spread your store here on the table, and let us all work out the calculation? Everybody knows you broke the bank, so there's no imprudence or ostentation in displaying your wealth."

Without a word, Mary accepted the suggestion, since not to do so would have seemed ungrateful.

"She's given away a lot already," said Carleton. "I saw her distributing mille notes to lovely but unfortunate gamblers, as if she were dealing out biscuits."

"Oh, I gave away only four," Mary excused herself. "They were nothing."

Everybody laughed except Madeleine.

The fat stacks of French banknotes were extracted with some effort from the hand-bag into which they had been stuffed. Captain Hannaford and Schuyler counted while the others watched, Carleton with amused interest, Mary with comparative indifference, because the actual money meant less to her than the thrill of winning it, and Madame d'Ambre on the verge of tears. She considered that she was being robbed of her rights, for she knew that this merciless man with the hard jaw and pleasant blue eyes intended to keep her hands off the money.

"One hundred and nine thousand francs!" Schuyler announced at last. "I congratulate you, Mademoiselle. And I wish you'd let me advise you."

"If I did, what would you say?" Mary smiled.

"I should say: 'Go home to-morrow.'"

"But I've just come away from home. I don't want to go back."

"Well, then, go to some other place, a place without a Casino."

"I suppose that's good advice," said Mary. "But—I can't take it yet."

"I'm sorry," returned Peter's cousin.

The whole conversation had been in French from the first, as Madame d'Ambre knew little English; and Mary's accent was so perfect that to an American or English ear it passed as Parisian. Neither Hannaford, Schuyler, nor Carleton supposed that she had just arrived from England, though her name—if they had caught it correctly—was English or Scotch. "Mademoiselle" they called her, and wondering who and what she was, vaguely associated her with France, probably Paris.

"How long shall you stay?" asked Carleton, in the pause that followed.

"I don't know," Mary said. "A few days, perhaps."

"Will you come down to the Condamine and see my hydro-aeroplane to-morrow? I'm keeping her there, and practising a bit in the harbour, before taking her to Nice."

"Oh, I should love to! I've never seen any sort of aeroplane, not even a picture of one."

"That's clever and original of you, anyhow. Where have you been, to avoid them? What time to-morrow? Is ten o'clock too early?"

Mary blushed. "Would afternoon suit you? I feel as if I should have luck again, if I played in the morning."

"Afternoon, of course," Carleton assented politely, though he was disappointed; for in giving the invitation he had been following his friend's lead in trying to save the moth from the candle. "Shall we say three o'clock? I'll call for you."

"We'll both call, with my car," said Schuyler. "But what about that 5 per cent. which I suppose you want to give your roulette teacher?" he went on, with apparent carelessness.

"I want to give her more," Mary confessed, with that soft obstinacy which people found difficult to combat.

But Schuyler had weapons for padded barricades. He turned to Madeleine. "I'm certain that Madame will refuse to accept more," he said.

She faced him defiantly. Then her eyes fell. She dared not make him an active enemy. Though he never gambled, he was a man of influence at the Casino, for he was a friend of those highest in authority, and had power "on the Rock," also, for the Prince and he were on visiting terms, Madeleine d'Ambre had learned these details since the evening on the terrace when he had tested her "poison."

"Yes, I—should refuse to accept," she echoed, morosely.

"Virtue is its own reward; and there may be others," Schuyler said as he deducted a sum equal to 5 per cent. from Mary's winnings and pushed it across the table.

But even this was not the end of his interference. When Madeleine rose and Mary sprang up obediently, he proposed that they, the three men, should see the ladies home. This plan was carried out; and when Mary had been left at the door of the Hotel de Paris, they insisted on taking Madame d'Ambre at once down the hill to her lodgings in the Condamine. The penance was made only a little lighter to the victim by a lift in Schuyler's automobile. She was far from grateful to its owner, and made no answer except a twist of the shoulders to his last words: "Remember not to change your mind. It isn't safe in this climate."

When they had dropped Hannaford at his hotel, also in the Condamine, Carleton lost no time in satisfying his curiosity. "I never saw you take so much trouble, Jim, over a woman. Is it a case of love at first sight, old man?"

"Bosh!" said Schuyler, "Don't you know me better? That girl puzzles me. There's something very odd about her. I'm conceited enough to think I can generally size people up pretty well at first sight, but she beats me. I can't make her out. And besides——"

"Besides—what?"

"I know I never saw her before, yet her face seems familiar. I associate her with—it's idiotic—but with the person I care for most in the world. Heaven knows why. I don't."

"Do I know who that person is?" Carleton ventured, unable to resist the temptation.

"No, you don't know," the older man returned, rather gruffly. "And I'm pretty sure you never will, because the less I talk or think about that person the better for me. That part of the story has nothing to do with the case. There's only this queer impression of mine. And I had a weird feeling as if it were my bounden duty to see that this little girl wasn't victimized by an unscrupulous woman. So I did what I could."

"I should think you did!" exclaimed the other. "I couldn't have done as much. Poor Madame d'Ambre."

"Her real name's probably the French for Smith, without a 'de' in it, unless it's to spell devil. If she's a widow, she's a grassy one. Her game is to be found crying on the Casino terrace by moonlight, preparatory to drinking poison, because she's tired of life and its temptations. If it's a young lieutenant just off his ship for a flutter at Monte, or some other lamb of that fleeciness, he's soon shorn. There's quite a good living in it, I understand. She always contrives to make the youngsters believe her an innocent angel, whom they must try to save."

"But you seem to have been on in that act. Was it a moonlight scene?"

"Plenty of moonshine—and clear enough for me to see through the angelhood to the designing minxhood. The poison was water, coloured, I should think, with cochineal, and pleasantly flavoured with a little bitter almond. But—well, one sees through people sometimes, as if they were jelly-fish, and yet is a little sorry for them just because they are jelly-fish, stranded on the beach."

"I see," said Carleton.

They were spinning along the white way that winds between mountain and sea, out of the principality, and so toward Cap Martin, Mentone, and on to Italy. The tramcars had ceased to run; the endless daytime procession of motor-cars and carriages was broken by the hours of sleep, and the glimmering road was empty save for immense, white-covered carts which had come from distant Lombardy, and over Alpine passes, bringing eggs and vegetables for the guests of Hercules. Slowly, yet steadily, shambled the tired mules, and would shamble on till dawn. There were often no lights on the carts, which moved silently, like mammoth ghosts, great lumbering vehicle after vehicle, each drawn by three or four mules or horses. As the lamps of Schuyler's powerful car flashed on them round sharp rock-corners, tearing the veil of shadow, they loomed up unexpectedly in the night, like some mystery suddenly revealed in a place of peace.

Schuyler liked motoring at night on the Riviera; for he never tired of the dark forms of mountains, cut out black in the creamy foam of star-spattered clouds, or the salt smell of the sea and its murmur, singing the same song Greeks and Romans had heard on these shores. He never tired of meeting the huge carts from Italy, travelling slowly through the dark. He always had the same keen, foolish wish to know whence they came, and what were the thoughts behind the bright eyes which waked from sleep and stared for an instant, as his lamps pried under the great quaking canopies: and more than all he enjoyed arriving at his own gate, seeing the pale shimmer of his marble statues against backgrounds of ivy and ilex, and drawing in the sweetness of his orange blossoms and roses. Because he never tired of these things the two months at Stellamare, often spent alone except for servants, were the best months of his year. Through stress and strain he thought of them, as a thirsty man thinks of a long draught of cool water; and he spent them quietly, living in each moment: not complicating his leisure with many acquaintances or amusements, and neither vexed nor pleased because people called him selfish, and gossipped about his palace in a garden as a place mysterious and secret. He was not quite in Paradise in his retreat there, because he was not a perfectly happy man; but he did not expect perfect happiness, and hoped for nothing better on earth than his lonely holidays at Stellamare.

Descending a steep hill toward the sea as the big car slipped between tall marble gate-posts, a perfume as of all the sweetest flowers of the world, gathered in a bouquet, was flung into the two men's faces. In the distance, beyond the house whose windows suddenly lit up as if by magic, a wide semi-circle of marble columns glimmered pale against the sea's deep indigo. And away across the stretch of quiet water glittered the amazing jewels of Monte Carlo.

"By Jove! no Roman emperor could have had a lovelier garden, or a more splendid palace on this coast," said Carleton, as he stood on the steps of the house modelled after the description of Pliny's villa at Laurentum. "Your greatest wish must be fulfilled."

"My greatest wish," Schuyler echoed, with a faint sigh. And in the starlight his face lost its hard lines. But Carleton did not see.

The door was thrown open by an old Italian servant, who had the profile of a captive Saracen king.

They went in together, and left the night full of perfume, and the song of little waves fringed with starlight, that broke on the rocks like fairy-gold—the vanishing fairy-gold of the Casino across the water.

And at the same moment (for it was very late) the dazzling illumination of the Casino terrace was dimmed, as if half the diamonds had been shut up in velvet cases.

A great peace fell upon the night, as though the throbbing of a passionate heart had ceased.



X

Vanno Della Robbia wished to think no more of the false stars that he had followed; for there was every reason now to believe them false stars. Yet something deep down in him refused to believe this; and he could not help thinking of them as before. But he would not give way to what seemed like weakness, and so he fought against the memory.

If he had come to Monte Carlo only for the sake of the girl, he would have left again next morning. Having come for other things, however, it would have been weaker to go than stay. His brother and sister-in-law had not arrived yet at their villa at Cap Martin, and were not due for some days, as Angelo had taken his bride to Ireland, to show her to a much loved cousin, the Duchess of Clare. Also there was the week of aviation, to which Vanno had been looking forward with interest during the voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles. A parachute which he had invented was to be used for the first time.

Though he could not help thinking of the eyes which haunted him with their lure of purity and innocence, he would not concern himself further with the comings and goings of Miss M. Grant of London. He went instead about his own affairs. He slept badly; but Vanno was accustomed to taking little sleep, therefore it did not occur to him to be tired because he woke finally at seven, after having lain awake till the ringing of Ste. Devote's five o'clock bells, down in the ravine. Instead, he felt a kind of burning energy which forced him to activity of some sort. After his cold bath he dressed quickly, and went out to walk, wishing himself back in the Libyan desert, where he had not seen or thought of any woman.

It was only half-past seven, and the sun was still low in the east, just rising above the mountains of Italy. It shone through a slit in two long purple clouds, and its shining lit the sea. Vanno ran down the steps to the Casino terrace, coming upon it near the clump of nymphlike palms, and the marble bust of Berlioz that Mary could see from her window. Hercules' Rock was on fire with sunrise, and the Prince's palace looked in the magic flame like a strange Valhalla.

Not a soul was to be seen, not even a gardener employed by the Casino, and all the watching eyes of the horned animal were asleep. Vanno stared at the great cream-white building with a brooding resentment, because of the influence which he believed it to exert over his clouded star. He fancied that she had been drawn here by its extraordinary magnetism which pulsed like electricity across Europe; and that, if she had not already been swept off her feet, soon she would be, and her soul drowned. To his own surprise, he could himself feel the mysterious power of the place. As he looked at the long windows framed in rose-red marble he remembered what his Arab friend, the astrologer in the desert, had said to him about this month of December.

"Could it be possible, if there were anything in the science of astrology," Vanno asked himself, "that the stars could rule the chances in a game of chance?" Vaguely he thought, with the mystic side of his nature, that to study, and prove or disprove this idea, might be interesting. But the side that was stern and ascetic thrust away the suggestion. He remembered the thousands of people who drifted here from all over the world, hoping for one reason or other to get the gold guarded by this big white dragon. Some perhaps believed in their stars; others had studied systems, and tried them on little roulette wheels at home; but nearly all went away defeated. The form of the long, high mountain called the Tete de Chien looked to Vanno like a giant man lying face down in despair, the shape of his head, his back, and supine legs tragic in desperate abandon. "That's a symbol," Vanno said, half aloud, and felt no longer the strange pulling at his heartstrings which for a moment had drawn him, too, under the influence. He thought of himself as one of the few, the very few, people within a wide range of Monte Carlo for whom the Casino meant nothing. For surely there were few indeed. Even the peasants among the mountains owed their living indirectly to the Casino. Because of its existence they were able to command large prices for their fruit and flowers and vegetables, or anything they could produce which pleasure-lovers drawn by the Casino could possibly want. Over there on the Rock, where red roofs of houses crowded closely together, everybody lived in one way or other by the Casino. No one, Vanno had been told, who was not Monegasque by birth or nationalization was allowed to live on the Rock. Probably many of the croupiers in the Casino and their families had houses there, and perhaps many were shopkeepers down in the Condamine, where the cheap hotels and lodging-houses were. Few of those hotels, or the more luxurious ones at Monte Carlo itself, would exist if it were not for the Casino, and the whole Riviera would be less prosperous. But Vanno was persuaded that he cared nothing for the gold of the dragon.

Once before, when he was almost a boy, he had come here with his brother Angelo for a few days. They had gone to see the Prince, whose ancient family, the Grimaldis, was older and more important even than the house of Rienzi. Vanno had promised Angelo that he would call at the palace this time, and he decided to do so formally in the afternoon; the morning he resolved to spend in walking up to La Turbie and down again. The exercise would clear his brain; and he fancied that he remembered the way well enough to find it again without asking directions.

There was something else he might do also, if there were time. A priest whom, as a boy, he had known well at Monte Della Robbia was now cure at Roquebrune. They corresponded, and in coming to the Riviera, Vanno had planned to look him up. He was in a mood to want a full day's programme.

In a few moments' walking he left Monte Carlo behind and came out upon the open hillside, where, above him, he saw the path leading skyward like an interminable staircase. Often as he mounted, bareheaded, his hat in his hand, he caught himself mentally trespassing on forbidden ground, thinking of his lost Giulietta, and wondering what she had been doing, every day and hour of her life since she was a child. He had never felt this pressing, insistent curiosity about any human being before. His thoughts followed the girl everywhere, wherever she might be; and something—the same Something which refused to disbelieve in her—seemed to know where she was at that moment, even how she looked, and what was in her soul, though his outer intelligence could see nothing. That rebellious Something longed to turn back toward Monte Carlo, to keep near her and guard her. It cried out strongly to do this, but Vanno would not listen. He sang to himself as he walked up the mule path among olive trees; and peasants coming down from the mountains, their nailed boots rattling on the cobblestones, were singing, too, strange wordless songs without tune, songs neither French nor Italian, but with a wild eastern lilt leaping out of their monotony, reminiscent of the days when Saracens ruled the coast. Some faces, too, were like the faces of eastern men, high featured, with enormous, flashing eyes. Here and there was one of a bold yet dreamy, gray-eyed, brown-haired type Vanno had not met before in any of his travels. He remembered that this country had belonged to the Ligurians before his ancestors, the Romans, took it after two hundred years' hard fighting: and types are persistent. He had heard that there were ruined Ligurian forts to be traced still, among the higher hills and mountains; and the monument of La Turbie, whither he was bound, was Augustus Caesar's emblem of triumph over the Ligurian tribes.

The funicular was not running at this hour, and the white lacings of the Upper Corniche were empty save for a cart or two, bringing down loads of wallflower-tinted stone from some mountain quarry, for the building of a villa. Vanno had easily found his way on to a mule path, rough yet well kept, and ancient perhaps as the hidden Ligurian forts. Round him was the gray-green shimmer of olive trees, and their old, thick roots that crawled and climbed the rocks were like knotted snakes asleep. Bands of pines marched and mourned along the skyline, and in the midst of glittering laurels cypress trees stood up straight and black as burnt-out torches.

Clouds that had darkened the east when Vanno started veiled the sun now, like lazy eyelids. The gay glitter was gone from the world, and the sea was of a dull velvety gray, dappled with silver-gleams that sifted through holes in the clouds, making the water look like scales on a fish's back. Far below lay the strip of frivolous fairyland, all that most strangers know of the Riviera: the pleasure towns with their palms and tropical flowers, the decorated villas, to live in which Vanno thought would be like living in hollowed-out birthday cakes. And the soft, thoughtful grayness which was dimming the sunshine suited this different, higher world as well as it suited his mood. The loveliness of trees, and the pale splendour of mountain peaks carved in bas-relief against the pearl-gray sky, rang out to his soul like a chime of bells from a cathedral tower, giving him back the mastery of himself. It was good to be here, where there were no sounds except the voice of Nature, singing her eternal song, in the universal language, and where the life of man seemed as distant as the far-down windows that glittered mysteriously out of shadows, as the eyes of a cat glitter at night.

Inarticulate, enchanting whispers of the love and joy which have been in the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, as if it were a prayer.

Almost before the time when Vanno Della Robbia had known words enough to clothe his most childish thoughts, he had possessed an unknown land, a kingdom and a castle of his own more beautiful than sunset clouds. To this land he always travelled when he was alone, and often at night in dreams. It had been around him in the desert where his errand had been to study the eastern stars; and the observatory at Monte Della Robbia, built with money left him by his mother, was one gateway to that land. When he was in this secret kingdom he was brother to the stars. All knowledge came echoing through his soul, as if whispered to him by past selves, other incarnations of himself, who had gleaned it in their lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls, which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come in, saying with her eyes, which he had likened to stars, that she was the princess who had a right to live there. Hers was the face of his dream. She was the song of the mermaids. The voice he had heard—would always hear in the sea—spoke of her. She was the light of the morning. Hers the face in the sunrise, and the twilight. If he lost her, still her spirit would haunt him, in music, in all beauty, for she was the one woman, the ideal which is the heart of a man's heart. She must be worthy, because there was no other princess for this kingdom of his, east of the sun and west of the moon; and without her the rooms of the castle would hold only echoes.

Vanno would have died rather than speak out such thoughts to any one on earth, for they were the property of that self which his brother Angelo said was at war with the other self, the self which the world knew.

Now and then, as he walked up the mule path with a step which became lighter with the lightness of the air, he threw a word in Italian to a passing peasant, some Ligurian-looking man who drove a bright-coloured market garden ending in a donkey's head and tail. Eyes and teeth flashed comprehension, but the answer was in a queer patois, a hotch-potch of Latin, Italian, French, and Arabic.

On the top of the mountain Vanno breakfasted, at a pink hotel fantastically built in hybrid Moorish style. From his window-table he could see the Tour de Supplice on a height below; a broken column of stone said to mark the place where Romans tortured and executed their prisoners. Far beneath lay the Rock of Hercules and Monte Carlo, the four unequal horns of the great white animal springing saliently to the eye even at this height. To the right, the great iron-gray bulk of the Tete de Chien hid the promontories which, like immense prehistoric reptiles, swam out to sea beyond Beaulieu; but to the left were the mountains of Italy, their highest ridges marbled with dazzling snow; and Cap Martin's green length was frilled with silver ripples.

Still Vanno was happy, as he had not been since he saw Mary dining alone in the restaurant of the Hotel de Paris. He had made a plan for the next hours, which gave him hope for the future.

After breakfast, he walked into the gray and ancient mountain-village of La Turbie, whose old houses and walls of tunnelled streets were built from the wreckage of Caesar's Trophy. Jewish faces peered at him from high, dark windows, for here it was that, in the Middle Ages, Jews fled from persecution, and made La Turbie a Jewish settlement. Even in the newer town of pink and blue and yellow houses there were Jewish faces to be seen in dusky shops where fruit was displayed for sale, in heaps like many-coloured jewels.

Just beyond the oldest outskirts Vanno came to the foot of the monument, unspeakably majestic still, though long ago stripped of its splendid marbles, and its statues that commemorated Caesar's triumph. Men were working in the shadow of the vast column of stone and crumbling Roman brick, digging for lost knowledge in the form of broken inscriptions, hands and heads of statues, bits of carved cornice, and a hundred buried treasures by means of which the historical puzzle-picture might gradually be matched together. Vanno became interested, and spent an hour watching and talking to the superintendent of the work, a cultured archaeologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing her nose after crying.

Vanno did not go down to the low levels; but asking the way of an old peasant whose head was wrapped in a red handkerchief, he learned how to find the hill-village of Roquebrune, keeping to the mule paths. He had made up his mind to invite himself to lunch with his old friend the cure.

This was another world from the world of the Casino and shops and hotels. The very air was different; nimble, and crystal clean. All the perfumes were aromatic; balsam of pine, and the country sweetness of thyme and mint, the pure breath of nature. Sloping down the mountains eastward toward Italy and descending more than halfway from La Turbie, Vanno came to the rock-town with the ruined castle which Mary had looked up to from Monte Carlo in last night's sunset. It seemed to have slid from a taller height above, and to have been arrested by miracle before much harm was done; and Vanno remembered the cure's first letter which had told him the legend of the place: how Roquebrune in punishment for the sins of its inhabitants was shaken off its high eyrie by a great earthquake, but stopped on the shoulder of the mountain through intercession of the Virgin, the special patron sainte vierge of the district. The town and its dominating castle seen from below showed as if flattened against the mountain's breast; but coming into the place on foot, the mountain retired into the background, and the huge mediaeval ruin was sovereign lord of all.

The whole village had been made by robbing the castle of brick and stone, as La Turbie was built of the Trophy. The castle itself grew out of the rock, so that it was difficult to see where nature's work ended or men's began; and the old, old houses crowding up to and huddled against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful carvings set into the thick stone walls, relics of the castle's decorations. At sharp corners were tiny shops with dark interiors, and strange assortments of golden oranges, big pearly onions, ruby beets, and bright green, peasant pottery in low-browed windows and on uneven doorsteps. Dark Saracen eyes gleamed out of the cold shadows in tunnelled streets, seeming to warm them with their light; and as Vanno reached the tiny Place where towered a large, old church, the pavement was flooded by a wave of brown-faced boys and girls, laughing and shouting. School was just out; and behind the children followed a man in the black cassock of a priest. He was walking slowly, reading from a little book. Vanno stood still, with eagerness and affection in his eyes, and willed him to look up.

This man had been the Prince's tutor, after Vanno was six, until he had passed his tenth birthday. It was years now since they had seen each other, eight perhaps, for it must be as long ago that the cure had come back to visit Rome. But the cheery, intelligent dark face had not changed much, except that it was less round, and the silvering of the once black hair had spiritualized it strangely.

The wave of children, after glances thrown at the newcomer, had ebbed away in different directions. The little cobble-paved Place became suddenly still. The priest moved leisurely, reading his book. Then, when he was quite near Vanno, he suddenly lifted his thick black lashes as if a voice had called his name. His good brown eyes and sunburned face lit up as though in a flash of sunlight.

"Principino!" he exclaimed.

Vanno grasped both his hands, book and all.

"What a happy surprise!" cried the cure, in Italian, and Vanno answered in the same language.

"But you knew I was coming one of these days. You got my letter? And perhaps Angelo has written?"

"Yes. He has written. I am to take the second breakfast with him and his bride one day soon after they arrive at Cap Martin, and bless their villa for them. You see, he too remembers the poor old friend!" and the cure smiled, a charming smile, showing beautiful teeth, strong and white as a boy's. "He said you would meet him, for the week of the flying men, but that is not quite yet. And your letter said the same. I did not look for you till some days later."

"Well, here I am," cried Vanno. "I came only yesterday afternoon, and my first thought is for you, Father. You look just the same. It might be months instead of years since we saw each other last! Will you give me lunch? I had only a cup of coffee and a croissant at La Turbie, and I'm as hungry as a wolf."

"A wolf this shepherd is not afraid to let into his fold. Will I not give you lunch? Though, alas! not being prepared for an honoured guest, it will hardly be worth your eating. If you have changed, my Principino, it is for the better. From a youth you have become a man."

They walked together across the Place, Vanno very slim and tall beside the shorter, squarer figure of the man of fifty. Into the church the cure led the Prince, and through the cool, incense-laden dusk to a door standing wide open. Outside was a green brightness, which made the doorway in the twilit church look like a huge block of flawed emerald set into the wall.

"My garden," said the priest, speaking affectionately, as of a loved child. "I think, Principino, you would like your dejeuner in the grape arbour. It is only a little arbour, and the garden is small. But wait, you will see it has a charm that many grander gardens lack."

They stepped from the brown dusk of the church out into the bright picture of a garden, which seemed unreal, a little garden in a dream, as complete and perfect in its way, Vanno thought, as an old Persian prayer rug.

It was a tangle of orange and lemon trees, looped with garlands of roses and flowering creepers, carpeted with a thousand fragrant, old-fashioned flowers, and arboured with grapevines, whose last year's leaves, though sparse, were still russet and gold: altogether a mere bright ribbon of beauty pinned like a lover's knot on a high shoulder of jutting rock. Below fell a precipice, overhanging steep slopes of vineyard, or orange plantations that went sliding down toward the far-off level of the sea, and the world of the strangers. Above, towered the ruined castle, immensely tall, its foundation-stones bedded in dark rock and draped in ivy. In the little garden, the hum of bees among the flowers was like an echo of far off, fairy harps.

"I think I am dreaming this," said Vanno. And he added, to himself: "It's part of my kingdom, that I never saw before."

The cure laughed, delighted. "Luckily for me it is real," he said. "And now that you are in it, my Principino—my one-time pupil, my all-time friend—it is perfect. I should like you to love it. I should like—yes, I should like some great happiness to come into your life here. That is an odd fancy, isn't it? for the great happiness seems likely to be mine in having you with me. But the idea sprang into my mind."

"It is a good idea," said Vanno. "I should like it to come true. I have a favour to ask you, and perhaps—who knows?—your granting it may somehow bring the wish to pass."

A tiny figure of a woman—so old, so fragile as to look as if she were made of transparent porcelain—appeared as he spoke from an arbour at the far end of the little garden, an arbour whose grapevines hung bannerlike over the precipice. She had a dish in her minute, wrinkled hands, and was so surprised at sight of the tall young stranger that she nearly dropped it.

"My little housekeeper," explained the cure. "She comes to me for a few hours every day, to keep me fed and tidy; and she brings my meals here to the arbour when the weather is fine; for I never tire of the view, and it gives me an appetite that nothing else does."

"I see now why your letters have always been so happy," Vanno said, "and why, when it was offered, you refused promotion in order to stay here."

"Oh, yes, I am very happy, thank Heaven, and I do my best to make others so. God loves mirth. Dulness is of the devil! I love the place and the people, and the people love me, I trust," the cure answered, with a bright and curiously spiritual smile which transfigured the sunburned face. "You have no idea, my Principino, of the thousand interests we have here in this little mountain village. Once it was of great importance. An English king came in the fourteenth century to visit the Lascaris family at the castle. Those down below hardly know of its existence, even those who come back year after year, but Roquebrune and my garden are world enough for me. Is breakfast ready, Mademoiselle Luciola? Thanks; we will begin as soon as you have brought things to lay another place. Is that not a good name for the wee body—Firefly? Oh, but you should see our fireflies here in May, when the Riviera is supposed to be wiped off the map, not existent till winter. And the glow-worms. I have three in my garden. No garden is complete without at least one glow-worm. I had to beg my first from a neighbour."

"I should like to live up here, and be your neighbour, and cultivate glow-worms," said Vanno, as his host guided him along a narrow path which led between flower-beds to the arbour.

"Why not?" cried the priest, enraptured. "You could buy beautiful land, a plateau of orange trees and olives, carpeted with violets—the petite campagne I spoke of. You could build a villa, small enough to shut up and put to sleep when you tired of it. We would be your caretakers, the old Mademoiselle and I."

"Would you have me live in my villa alone?" Vanno smiled.

The cure looked merrily sly. "Why not with a bride?" he ventured. "Why not follow your brother Angelo's example?"

"I must see his bride first, to judge whether his example is worth following. We haven't met yet."

"Ah," exclaimed the priest, "that reminds me of rather a strange thing! There came a lady here—but I will tell you, Principino, while we lunch."

Beaming with pleasure in his hospitality, the cure ushered his guest into the arbour, which, like a seabird's nest, almost overhung the cliff. Under shelter of the thick old grapevine and a pink cataract of roses, a common deal table was spread with coarse but spotless damask. In a green saucer of peasant ware, one huge pink rose floated in water. The effect was more charming than any bouquet. There was nothing to eat but brown bread with creamy cheese, and grapes of a curious colour like amber and amethysts melted and run together; yet to Vanno it seemed a feast.

The cure explained that the grapes had been grown on this arbour, and that he had them to eat and to give away, all winter. When the porcelain doll of a woman came back, she brought a bottle of home-made wine for Vanno, and some little sponge cakes. But when the Prince said that in England such cakes were named "lady fingers," the cure laughed gayly, and pretended to be horrified. This brought him back to his story, which, in the excitement of helping his guest to food, he had almost forgotten.

"I was going to tell you," he went on, "of a strange thing, and a lady unknown to me, who called here. She was from England, I should say."

Vanno's heart gave a quick throb. "Could it be possible?" he wondered, "Was she young and beautiful?" he asked aloud. But the answer dashed his rather childish hope.

"Not beautiful, and not a girl, but young still. 'Striking' would be the word to express her. And her age, about thirty."

Vanno lost interest. "Why was it so strange that she should call?" he inquired. "People must find their way here sometimes; even those who haven't you for a friend."

"Yes, sometimes; and I am glad to see them. This was strange only because the lady knew that I was a friend of your family. She came because of that, and put a great many questions; but she refused to tell her name. She said it was not necessary to mention it."

Interest came back again in a degree. "What was she like?" the Prince wanted to know.

The cure thought for a moment, and answered slowly. "I can see her still," he said, "because there was something different about her from any one else I ever saw. As she came toward me in the Place, where you and I met, she looked like a statue moving, her face was so white, and her eyes seemed to be white, too, like the eyes of a statue. But when she drew nearer, I saw that they were a pale, whitish blue, rimmed with thin lines of black. There was very little colour in her lips or in her light brown hair, and she had on a gray hat and travelling dress."

"Idina Bland!" Vanno exclaimed.

"You recognize the lady from my description?"

"Yes. What you say about her eyes is unmistakable. She's a distant cousin of ours—on our mother's side: Irish, from the north of Ireland; but she has lived a good deal in America with my mother's brother and sister. She has no nearer relatives than ourselves, and for three winters she was in Rome—oh, long after you went away. I thought she was in America now. I wonder——" He broke off abruptly, and his face was troubled. "What questions did she ask you?" he went on. "Were they about—my brother?"

"Yes. She wished to know if I could tell her just when he was expected with his bride, and what would be their address when they arrived. I had the impression from something she said that she had heard about me from you."

"I don't remember," said Vanno. "I may have mentioned to her that we had a friend, a cure near Monte Carlo. She has a singularly good memory. She never forgets—or forgives," he added, half under his breath. "When did she come here?"

"The day before yesterday it was, Principino."

"Did she say whether she was staying in the neighbourhood?"

"No, she said nothing about herself, except that she had known your family well for years."

"And about Angelo—what?"

"Nothing, except the questions. She wanted me to tell her whether I had ever met or heard anything of his bride."

"I suppose you didn't give her much satisfaction?"

"Not much, my Principino. I could not, if I would. But I did say that I believed they were expected in ten days or a fortnight. I hope I was not indiscreet?"

"Not at all. Only—but it doesn't matter."

"Then, if it doesn't matter, let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts. The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."

After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined to carry out his plan.

"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!' Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train, meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do that."

"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the cure. "You would always act on impulse, you man of fire—and ice."

"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of making her acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant to do it. Now, I'm not sure—not sure of anything about her. I'm not even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask is, that you help me to judge—and help her, if you have to judge harshly."

"I?"

"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.

As he talked, the cure's gaze dwelt on him affectionately, appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity, not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband, which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage, but that Vanno when he had met the bride would "somehow make it all come right." It would be a terrible thing if this younger son should fall in love with the wrong woman; but it was too early yet to begin preachings and warnings. The cure's kind heart gave him great tact.

"I am to go downstairs and look at this lady, then?" he said.

"Downstairs?"

"Only my expression for going down there. I always say that I live upstairs, here at Roquebrune. And I like the upstairs life best."

"Well, you must come down and dine with me, anyhow. Then you will see her, and tell me what you think."

The cure broke into a laugh, like a boy's. "Me dine at your Hotel de Paris, my son? That is a funny thought. You're inconsistent. If you think it unsuitable for a lady alone, what about me, a poor country priest from the mountains?"

"You wouldn't be alone. And you're a man. Besides, it's a good object. When you've seen her, you must make acquaintance with her somehow. I won't do it. Not while I doubt her."

"Hm! My Principino, you don't know what you are asking me. I am a priest."

"That's why I ask you. She's—I'll tell you, Father, if she goes on winning money, you can write to beg for your poor. Then, if she's charitable, she'll give, and come up to see your church."

"And you think the rest is simple! Well, for your sake I will do what I can."

"Will you dine with me to-night?"

"Impossible. I cannot leave the village for so much as an hour for the present. I am shepherd of a mountain flock, remember, and my first duty is to them. At any moment I may have a summons to one who is dying. A black sheep he has been perhaps, but all the more should he be washed white at the last. And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."

Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.

"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.

"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help you to judge the lady for yourself—something definite."

"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes. They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.

"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was something more mysterious than that. I swear to you, it was as if her eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"

"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"

"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that it's hard for me to believe in others."

"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."

"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has been that this girl—this girl who has a child's face, I tell you, Father—seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood—or romance. I can't describe it."

"You have made me understand," the cure answered quietly. "And you have made me—for your sake—want to find out as soon as I possibly can what truth is under all this sweetness."



XI

The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was, "At what hour does the Casino open?"

Ten o'clock, she was told.

It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!

Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.

From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of the Casino, whose doors were still closed.

"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an accident.

"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg, poached and adorned according to the conception of a French chef. The air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary made her feel there was nothing she could do to show her appreciation, without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry, lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when stretching over people's heads.

By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit to a theatre?

At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python. Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it; and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside from the rooms.

Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began. It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables. Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor. Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player, with his attendant—the first to get in—was swept along in a small bath chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers had an advantage, especially those with long legs.

Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one, rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however, the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into it as he drew it out for himself.

"Well done!" muttered a woman already settled in a neighbouring seat. "That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."

Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.

Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen, or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited, and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of play which they were working out together.

It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play, instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon. Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a time there was nothing more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.

Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make you win."

Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.

"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.

"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.

Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had grown so hungry that she could no longer concentrate her thoughts upon the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour. Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office. But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend, who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She did not see why every one could not play as she did.

As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for dejeuner, and she heard Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at every seance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's unbreakable in the end."

It was half-past two when Mary began luncheon, and she had to finish in a hurry when Schuyler and Carleton called for her with the motor-car. She was sorry that she had promised to look at anything so irrelevant as an aeroplane, and felt nervously irritable because she could not at once go back to her game. She could almost hear the Casino calling her in a musical, golden voice: "I have something nice to give you. Why don't you come and take it?" But it was interesting to tell the two men about her luck of the morning. Each detail of the play was so fascinating to her that she would hardly have believed it possible for the story to bore any one else. She did not ask a single question about the remarkable hydro-aeroplane in which Carleton was to compete for an important prize next week; nor did she see the pitying smile the men exchanged while she entertained them with an exact account of how she had staked, what she had lost, and what she had won. "Poor child!" the look said. But neither man blamed the girl for her selfish absorption. Both understood the phase very well, and it was not long since Carleton had lived it down, thanks to some friendly brutality on Jim's part. As for Schuyler, though he never played at the Casino, it was because he had played too often when a younger man, in America. Roulette and trente et quarante bored him now, though the great game in Wall Street still had power over his nerves, when he was in the thick of it. One reason that he avoided society at Monte Carlo and invited few people to his house was because the constant babble about the "Rooms" and the "tables" exhausted his vitality, making him feel, as he said, "like a field-mouse in a vacuum." Sometimes it had seemed to him that, if once again he heard any one say, "Oh, if only I had played on seventeen!" he would be forced to strike the offender, or rush away in self-defence.

Already Mary's eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new pursuit was not proof against the hydro-aeroplane lurking in its hangar. It looked wonderful, yet she could not believe that it was able really to rise out of the water into air.

"I assure you it does, though, and it can run on land, too," said Carleton, eagerly. "Surely you must have read of Glenn Curtiss and his Triad, that made such a sensation in America? You can ask Jim. He saw my first successful experiment in the Hudson River six weeks ago."

"And one or two unsuccessful ones, too," laughed Jim. "But I really think, Miss Grant, that Carleton's got his pet dragon into pretty good training now, both as a land and water and air animal. I shouldn't wonder if we'd see something worth seeing nest week at Nice?—and it will be new on this coast, for there've been no hydro-aeroplanes tried here before."

"Next week?" echoed Mary. "Shan't I see anything now? I thought Mr. Carleton meant to go up in the air to-day."

"I hadn't thought of it, but I will if you like. That is, I'll try," said Carleton, modestly.

"I—oh, how I should love to go with you!" Mary exclaimed. "Can you carry people?"

"One passenger at a time, yes. You wouldn't really like it, would you?" he asked, flushing under the compliment of her trust in him, and admiring her pluck. "You don't mean that you'd go up with me?"

"I would if you'd take me." Her eyes were shining once more. "It would be—like all one's most marvellous dreams come true."

"You wouldn't be afraid?"

"Oh, no, not with you."

This was delicious flattery. Carleton promptly fell in love with Mary. Not to have done so would have been base ingratitude. No woman had ever paid him so great a compliment. He had thought her bewilderingly pretty before. Now she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You're the bravest girl on earth!" he exclaimed, ardently.

"Better leave her on earth, then," Schuyler said dryly. "We need brave women."

"There's no danger," Carleton protested with indignation. "Do you think I'd take her, if I thought there were?"

"Not if you thought there were. And I don't say there is. But Miss Grant's here without her people——"

"I have no people," Mary cut him short. "Because you can't count aunts, can you, especially if they dislike you very much?"

Both men laughed.

"I must be your passenger," she said. "Now I've seen the hydro-aeroplane, I shan't eat or sleep till I've been up in it."

Carleton looked at his host. "You know, at worst she could only get a wetting if I kept over the sea," he said. "And very likely the Flying Fish will be cranky and refuse to rise."

"Here's hoping!" mumbled Schuyler. He did not define the exact nature of his hope, but offered no further objections.

Mary, seeing that she was to have her wish, was anxious to start at once, and almost surprised at herself for her own courage. But Carleton explained that she could not "make an ascent," as he laconically called it, dressed as she was. She must have a small, close fitting hat, and a veil to tie it firmly down, also a heavy wrap. He had an oilskin coat which he could lend her, to put over it. Mary was not, however, to be turned from her desire by small obstacles. She had no very thick coat, but knew where to buy a lovely moleskin, very long, down to her feet. She could secure it and be ready in ten minutes if Mr. Schuyler would send her up the hill in his car. Permission was granted and she went spinning off with the chauffeur, both Schuyler and Carleton awaiting her return at the hangar, down on the beach by the harbour.

The "ten minutes" prolonged themselves to twenty, and while they were slowly passing, three men who had been on the Rock, writing their names in the visitors' book at the palace, came strolling down the long flight of paved steps to the harbour. One of these was Captain Hannaford. The other Englishman was also an officer, Major Norwood, who had known Hannaford long ago. And the third member of the party was the Maharajah of Indorwana, an extremely troublesome young Indian royalty who was "seeing Europe" under the guardianship of his reluctant bear leader, Norwood. Since the pair had landed at Marseilles, three weeks ago, Norwood had passed scarcely a peaceful moment by night or day. His authority over his charge was officially absolute; but in practise it could only be enforced by violence, which the unfortunate officer had not yet brought himself to exert. If he did not wish the Maharajah (who was twenty and had never before been out of his native land) to fall into some new mischief every hour, he was obliged to find for the youth a ceaseless succession of amusements. Monte Carlo was to have been but the affair of a day. The Maharajah, however, had decided differently. He liked the place, and firmly refused to move. The two had now been staying for a week at the Metropole, and Major Norwood had telegraphed to the India Office in London for instructions.

The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock he had driven his own car—bought at Marseilles—to Nice, full to overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident, and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish Museum; but there was a yearning for new excitements in his dangerous dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to explain the features of his Flying Fish, when the big blue car brought Miss Grant back.

At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his charge looked at a beautiful woman.

The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was engaging. Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks, while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.

"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation, asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a flight.

"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the palace on the Rock.

He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the cure, had dressed and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at Monaco—something worth seeing—he had started out to walk.

The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the water.

Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.

She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment, sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass; but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, his Flying Fish rose higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.

Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating, and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the expansion of his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was afraid—afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life. He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.

The relief was so great when the Flying Fish dropped slowly down and settled again into the water that Vanno was slightly giddy with the rush of blood through his veins. He watched the hydro-aeroplane turn and head back for the mouth of Monaco harbour; and it seemed to him that he had lived through years in a few minutes, as one can have a lifetime's experience in one short dream. He sickened as he thought what would be his feelings now if the machine had fallen and turned over, too far off for any hope of rescue from land. If those "eyes like stars" had been closed until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could make up for the loss. It was only when the Flying Fish swam safely into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing; but no sooner was she on land again, received with acclamations from her new friends and applause by the crowd which had quickly collected, than Vanno felt the same tingling anger.

The girl was making herself notorious! At this rate she would be talked of everywhere. Strangers would snapshot her as she passed. Her picture would be for sale on one of those Monte Carlo postcards of celebrities which were newly taken every day; she would be in the local English illustrated newspaper. He walked off quickly, with his head down, so as to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.

She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never, perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care; but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think of him only with disgust or maybe horror. Yet he knew that, now he had seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces. But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet, cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him. "Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain. It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had yet been received there from Monte Carlo.